Kolkata: The Enforcement Directorate (ED) officials probing the dubious lottery entity in several states are trying to get to the roots that made the management of the said group give special focus to West Bengal.
Sources said that of the total cash confiscated by the ED during the raid and search operations last week from different cities in six states, the maximum was from Kolkata.
During the operation last week, the Central agency confiscated Rs 12.41 crore in cash. Of this Rs 3 crore was recovered from the residence-cum-office of a dealer of the said lottery entity in South Kolkata.
The second point is the entity that illegally captured the lottery market by not allowing others to operate was, especially, active in West Bengal, which the investigating officials believe could not have been possible without the backing of highly influential links within the state, the sources said.
The third point, as per the sources, was that the big prize-winning tickets were always from West Bengal. What was especially rampant in the state was the purchasing of big prize-winning tickets against cash payment. This was done to convert “unaccounted money” into “accounted one”.
The fourth point that the ED officials are especially emphasizing is how the said entity made a meteoric bounce-back in its businesses in West Bengal just less than two years after it dipped in 2015 following a raid and search operation by the Income Tax officials at their officers. As much as Rs 70 crore was confiscated in the same year.
The fifth and final aspect of this probe is the instances of the members of the same family, in one case husband and wife, winning jackpot prizes within very short intervals.
As per ED’s findings so far 90 per cent of the business of the company is in lottery tickets with a face value of Rs 6 against which most of the prizes are below Rs 10,000 which is non-taxable.
No proper record was maintained by the company regarding the prize winners, sold and unsold tickets. Lottery schemes were designed by the company in such a way that substantial profit went to the entity only and the organising state got a very small portion of the revenue.
Leader of Opposition in the West Bengal Assembly, Suvendu Adhikari has been for quite some time alleging a major lottery scam in West Bengal in which several poor people in rural India have lost their hard-earned money.
He has also alleged that important leaders of the ruling Trinamool Congress were the principal beneficiaries in the lottery scam.
(IANS)
